Ahem... OK, so where was I? Sorry for the delay. I know you guys were hanging on my every word.

Our adventure was postponed for various reasons, but here's the upshot:

They had a roarin' good time! The group is hooked, on both Greyhawk and Savage Worlds. My eldest son still piddles around with his AD&D books, but he's heavily invested in our current SW game.

Dirty Ernie wrote:Frankly, I'm a bit put-off by the icy/snowy/viking-ish vibe of Hellfrost, and not really looking for a new setting due to my fondness for Greyhawk.

What does my son decide to play? An exiled Suel Frost Barbarian Bad@$$ with his tongue cut out. Go figure...

By the way, why is there no Mute Hindrance in the core rules? I found a thread here that gets us by, but it just seems strange that it isn't covered in the book.

Another player creates a High-Elf Mage/Thief from Celene.

Again, I wrote:Also, an across-the-board setting Hindrance that explains the Mage's armor/weapon restrictions. I'd rather not just outlaw these things arbitrarily, but penalize Spellcasting rolls when wearing/using them, and let the player decide if they're worth having.

Once again, I wrote:Then, another higher-ranked Edge (perhaps call it "Warlock"?) to get around the armor/weapon restrictions, allowing casting without penalty.

Guess what. She didn't want any armor, and I practically had to beg her to take some kind of combat skill. She settles on a sling. Picks divination/healing spells. Go figure...

The other players were ribbing her about being useless, but she took it in stride. Good thing Elves are so long-lived, because it's gonna take awhile for her to be any kind of a threat due to her "Multi-classed"* nature.

We used the racial tweaks found in Prof. Fate's Greyhawk Conversion. They added a lot of flavor, and helped my players conceptualize their characters, but I'd like to know if they're balanced. I'd never seen SW character sheets filled with such a dizzying amount of info, but I (and my players) loved it!

kronovan wrote:Hence my favoring using the Quirk hindrance as a way to limit the armor equipping capability of arcane characters.

Could you be more specific? What kind of Quirks? Body odor? A rash? Physical injury? Mental handicaps? Spiritual backlash? I'm interested. What did you have in mind?

Well anyway, despite my questions, we had a great time with our opening Greyhawk scenario! The players are champin' at the bit for more adventure, and I'm racing to keep up. Maybe I'll find the time to post a recap.

Thanks once again for your help everyone.

I've often speculated why you don't return to America. Did you abscond with the church funds? Run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man. It's the Romantic in me.

kronovan wrote:Hence my favoring using the Quirk hindrance as a way to limit the armor equipping capability of arcane characters.

Could you be more specific? What kind of Quirks? Body odor? A rash? Physical injury? Mental handicaps? Spiritual backlash? I'm interested. What did you have in mind?

The quirk would be that due to the nature of an Arcane character's magic it causes a conflict with metal based armor, hence they can't successfully wear it. You can leave the quirk at that, or define it with more trappings like; when casting a spell, sparks arc across metal-based armor and inflict a shock to the caster resulting in 1 level of Fatigue. Note that I mentioned Arcane because Divine casters in AD&D (Clerics/AB Miracles) don't have such a limitation. It sounds like you and you group are comfortable with the idea of applying extra penalties to rolls though, so you should probably just stick with that.

By the way, why is there no Mute Hindrance in the core rules? I found a thread here that gets us by, but it just seems strange that it isn't covered in the book.

That would be the Quirk hindrance too. Its up to the player or GM to define the trappings of a quirk and being mute and all the complications that come with it could be 1 such trapping.

@Kronovan - For the most part, I think we're on the same page, and I've enjoyed our back 'n' forth. But...

Dirty Ernie wrote:By the way, why is there no Mute Hindrance in the core rules? I found a thread here that gets us by, but it just seems strange that it isn't covered in the book.

kronovan wrote:That would be the Quirk hindrance too.

Sir, I gotta respectfully disagree in a big way. Surely this is a Major Hindrance. You didn't see my son's Mute Frost Barbarian trying to call for back-up, or bark instructions to his comrades while investigating a God-forsaken tomb in the Cairn Hills.

I've often speculated why you don't return to America. Did you abscond with the church funds? Run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man. It's the Romantic in me.

Dirty Ernie wrote:By the way, why is there no Mute Hindrance in the core rules? I found a thread here that gets us by, but it just seems strange that it isn't covered in the book.

kronovan wrote:That would be the Quirk hindrance too.

Sir, I gotta respectfully disagree in a big way. Surely this is a Major Hindrance. You didn't see my son's Mute Frost Barbarian trying to call for back-up, or bark instructions to his comrades while investigating a God-forsaken tomb in the Cairn Hills.

Ah OK, I see where you're coming from. It depends upon how you approach hindrances. You've no doubt noticed that a number of them are rated as Major/Minor. I don't view the hindrances as defined in SWD as written in stone and I've run enough settings that I'm comfortable with allowing one that's only rated Minor to become a Major provided the player provides a severe enough definition to justify it. If I had a player that wanted Quirk to be major by making their PC mute, I'd have no problem allowing it.

But he isn't really mute. Losing the tongue may stop him from forming words, but he can still vocalize and so could still call out an alarm. And in a pitched battle, it is hard to talk to another combatant over the noise of the fight. Easier to signal by other means, like with gestures.

Not until I type one up and embellish it with flowery prose. Coming soon.

Cryonic wrote:But he isn't really mute. Losing the tongue may stop him from forming words, but he can still vocalize and so could still call out an alarm. And in a pitched battle, it is hard to talk to another combatant over the noise of the fight. Easier to signal by other means, like with gestures.

Yes, he did try to communicate, and eventually made himself understood. Many Bennies were earned by Olavvi the Silent. "A+" for Effort.

But, rest assured, this will be a Major Hindrance when he has to answer to the Greyhawk City Watch after dark, or when he has to pose as the Ambassador of Ratik at the Lord-Mayor's feast during the Needfest festivities.

I wanna penalize the Spellcasting roll, thus increasing the chance of Spell failure, as well as Backlash (Harm to the Spellcaster, with Trappings, of course).

Am I gettin' it?

Pretty much, except that with the quirk the spell still only succeeds if the PC successfully makes their spellcasting roll. As well, if their particular AB makes them subject to a backlash on a significant failure (i.e. rolling 1 on their spellcasting dice) they'd still be subject to that backlash. All the quirk hindrance really does is introduce a consequence if the spellcaster decides to don metal-baced armor.

I've read this thread with interest, having been a fan of Greyhawk since the early 1980s. I agree with many of the ideas of letting Savage Worlds be Savage Worlds and concentrating on bringing over the society and culture. Some ideas off the top of my head:

Wizards

I would have it that they can not cast spells while wearing armor, unless they have a special edge that allows them to do so.

As for Vancian magic, for a homebrew fantasy setting I'm working on, I'm considering the idea of spell preparation: a character with the Read Magic Grimore edge can cast a spell from a magic book, but not have it go off until later, i.e. prepare a spell. The spell ties up power points in the meantime until it is discharged.

As a side note, I have resolved to call "Power Points" "Manna" in my own game. Manna works exactly like Power Points, but I like the term Manna better.

Another thing I would do for World of Greyhawk is make a series of nine edges which allow access to arcane spells, each edge having the previous ones as a prerequisite and offering more powerful spells. This would mean that characters able to cast 1st and 2nd level spells would be common, but very very few characters would be able to cast 9th level spells. PCs would also be similarly restricted, having to devote 9 advances to gaining full 9th level spell capability.

Clerical and Druidic magic would work in a similar way, except that Clerics are able to wear armor, while Druids are limited to armor made of natural materials.

Also, I remember from the 1st edition Dungeon Masters Guide that mid-level characters were everywhere. It would not be too uncommon to encounter mid-level wizards in a major city. Even the villages probably have a mid-level cleric around.

WoTC has recently rereleased the 1st level core books, and I have been using the Dungeon Masters Guide since 2000 for guidance on encounters.

Classes

An idea I am considering for my fantasy homebrew is to have those with the Warrior background use a D8 for a wild die when fighting. Those with a Hunter background use a D8 for wilderness skills. Those with a Skald background use a D8 for social skills. Et cetera. The idea is to give Wild Cards an edge in the area for which they have been trained.

If you look at the 1st edition PLayers Handbook, you'll see that the first 10 levels of each class have special names assigned. I might take some of these and convert them to edges that grant special bonuses and recognition, such as the Hero edge that allows characters to make an extra attack every other round, or an Initiate of the Fifth Circle edge that allows characters to take the form of animals.

Races

If you want to get the 1st Edition feeling, then only members of a few races would have wild card characters: the "demi-human" races, and perhaps a few of the monster types in the Monster Manual, plus all the unique monsters such as Demogorgon and Tiamat.

For my homebrew, I've been considering a third type of character, the "Court Card" characters, who have some of the advantages of Wild Cards, but not all. A Bugbear shaman, for example, might require three wounds to go down, but does not got the other advantages of Wild Card characters.

Running Greyhawk

I've run Greyhawk games, and never had a problem with "sparseness". I always think that while officially only a few points on the map have been defined in detail, the same level of detail also exists throughout the map, so encounters are as plentiful or sparse as I want to make them.

Last night at our monthly gaming society meet, one of the more RPG savvy members layed out on a table 6 boxes worth of their old RPG's free for the taking. And there sitting in a pile was a copy of the 1988 AD&D Greyhawk Adventures hardcover. Soooo...I scooped it up about as fast as a PC with d12+2 Agility.

I've been reading through it and it looks to be a good book for running Greyhawk with Savage Worlds. It contains a nice chapter on the geography of Oerth and 6 adventures that are fairly system neutral.

@Kronovan: Nice score! My book is long gone, but luckily I've still got a digital copy.

@Utgardloki: I like everything you said, Good Sir. We're on the same page.

I'm currently working on a "Grand Tour", Plot-Point campaign for the World of Greyhawk. My goal is for the players to experience all the various flavors, legendary places, and iconic personages of the setting, if only briefly.

Oh yeah... and carve their names into the history books.

I think I'm gonna go with the Hub-type structure, the City of Greyhawk being the home base, of course. Here's what I've got in mind...

Wow. It's past my bedtime. I'll be back tomorrow.

I've often speculated why you don't return to America. Did you abscond with the church funds? Run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man. It's the Romantic in me.

As mentioned above, Greyhawk, Gem of the Flanaess will be the hub, with spurs reaching out to the far reaches of the map. It would be a world-spanning campaign, collecting artifacts from all corners of eastern Oerik to combat a powerful enemy bent on destruction. It would not be a world-changing conflict, but “merely” keeping evil at bay, averting catastrophe, maintaining the status-quo and making Oerth safe for the good peoples.

I also wanna cover the classic adventures, hitting the high points:
-- The Temple of Elemental Evil
-- Castle Greyhawk (Zagig)
-- The Tomb of Horrors
-- Vale of the Mage
-- Against the Giants series
-- Vault of the Drow

People to Meet:
-- Lord Robilar
-- Mordenkainen and the other members of the Circle of Eight
-- St. Cuthbert
-- and ultimately… Zagig the Mad

Against the Giants is that one series of modules I hesitate to ever run under Savage Worlds (at least as written). No matter what one's opinion of D&D, the one thing it shined at was PCs fighting a large number of high HP bags.

Large numbers of high toughness creatures, even as extras, tend to be rather ugly/grindy fights. I would probably have to "reimagine" that series IMO.

Dirty Ernie wrote:Against the Giants is that one series of modules I hesitate to ever run under Savage Worlds (at least as written). No matter what one's opinion of D&D, the one thing it shined at was PCs fighting a large number of high HP bags.

Large numbers of high toughness creatures, even as extras, tend to be rather ugly/grindy fights. I would probably have to "reimagine" that series IMO.

I think it could work, assuming you had the right set of PCs. I ran some numbers, for instance, and the (not particularly optimized) barbarian from my high level savage Greyhawk game could drop a non-wild card giant with one hit, even without her magic sword.